Memeorandum

November 27, 2007

Role Models

Nick Confessore of the Times covers the unraveling of Eliot Spitzer and delivers this surprise:

Still, for all of Mr. Spitzer’s growing pains, many of his advisers
remained convinced that his stubbornness was what people outside of
Albany like most about him. Some aides likened him to Ronald Reagan and Rudolph W. Giuliani: no-nonsense politicians who spoke bluntly and overturned entrenched political orders.

Let me get this straight - Democratic aides to a Democratic Governor in a Democratic state were talking to Nick Confessore of the Times (and formerly of The American Prospect, so presumably a Democrat), and they chose to liken Spitzer favorably to Reagan and Giuliani? Are they really unable to come up with any no-nonsense Democrats? Trying times.

Yet despair not! There is a glimmer of hope for Dems here - Spitzer himself is trying to learn from a recent Democratic President, but no, it's not Bill Clinton, nor even Jimmy Carter:

Mr. Spitzer said he had, in fact, been hitting the books. While he
has previously delved into biographies of governors like Roosevelt,
Charles Hughes and Al Smith, all of whom battled the Legislature to
bring about change, he said he was now pondering the lessons of
President Lyndon B. Johnson, who matched brute will to a subtle mastery of the legislative process.

“There’s
an art there that I would like to be more successful at,” Mr. Spitzer
said. “Life is a learning process, and a little more Lyndon Johnson
would not hurt.”

So Eliot Spitzer hopes to bring the best of Reagan, Giuliani, and LBJ. Go, libs!

Spitzer Policy Director Peter Pope said he was "going to kill" Gavin Donohue, the head of the Independent Power Producers of New York, an association of private energy companies, in a bitter clash early last summer over the governor's efforts to block the construction of nuclear-power plants and more than two "clean coal" plants in the state, the sources said.

Aside from the obvious puff-piecery of the Times piece, that bit about Johnson did more to capture the true Elliot as anything his enemies might have said.

From every knowledgeable source I've ever read or seen, LBJ could be the archtype of stubborn, opinionated, crude, cynical, ruthless, political power baron: dedicated to the proposition that he would get what he wanted, and his ends justified any means.

I'd say Elliot's only hope to be a true leader (and save his career) would be to find a way to eradicate every trace of his LBJ demon.

Yet another piece of evidence that Spitzer's own poor judgment will be his doom.

He's a bum whose rich dad's largesse allowed him to live very well while misusing his position as a prosecutor to make a political career,a man who once he took office as governor committed acts he'd have indicted any opponent for.Beyond that, he has a political tin ear at least as bad as Hi does.